Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha announced on Wednesday that Thomas Woodworth, the prison officer who intentionally drove his truck into a peaceful group of Jewish demonstrators protesting anti-immigrant policies, won’t face any charges. The Boston Globe reports, “Neronha said the 23-member grand jury needed at least 12 votes to support criminal charges being filed, but it declined to indict anyone following an ‘extremely thorough’ investigation that included law enforcement interviewing more than 70 witnesses in the case.”
Truly a disgusting but unsurprising decision, said the group Never Again Action, which led the August protest. “Witnesses who testified before the grand jury, including those who were hit by the truck, reported that prosecutors focused only on the supposed ‘danger’ of unarmed protesters in an effort to justify Woodworth's and his colleagues’ self-evidently indefensible actions,” the group said in a statement. “This strategy, employed by Attorney General Neronha's prosecutors, is used repeatedly by investigators across the country probing police violence against citizens.”
Woodworth resigned from his job several days after he was caught on video intentionally driving his vehicle into peaceful Never Again Action members outside the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. In video from the group and Rhode Island NBC affiliate WJAR, guards were also seen pepper-spraying activists, of which a number had to be treated at a hospital. This was, again, a group of peaceful demonstrators engaged in an act of civil disobedience, yet the response from officials was assault with pepper spray and a truck.
Never Again Action members plan to gather outside Neronha’s office later Wednesday to protest the decision and “once again call on Governor [Gina] Raimondo, the General Assembly, and the Mayor and City Council of Central Falls to do everything in their power to shut this dangerous and immoral facility down,” and to continue to shine a light on the abuses that immigrants face daily in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention—and that don’t get caught on video.
“If these officers, acting in their official capacity, acted with such violence toward protesters, we can only imagine how they treat the immigrants and asylum-seekers in their charge on a regular basis,” the group noted. “Mr. Woodworth should be in jail but, more importantly, the Wyatt should be shut down, the state should ban all collaboration with ICE, and ICE detainees at the Wyatt should be freed.”